All efforts in favor of air quality welcomed

By the Editors

Citizens say that plans don’t take into account the importance of water for the people (Photo: taken from the internet).
(Sign contents: Protecting water resources is an issue of national security, President Peña Nieto. The Magical Town of Todos Santos says NO to open-air pit mining that will destroy and contaminate our aquifers. YES to tourism).

When it comes to the struggle for environmental protection in the Gulf of California region, the issue of solid waste and toxic residues has historically taken a back seat to those of resource conservation and prevention of resource depletion.

This is probably due to the amazing biodiversity and beauty found in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Scientists and environmentalists tend to pay more attention first to protecting water, soils, flora and fauna before turning an eye towards toxic, radioactive, and infectious biological residues that emanate from chimneys and outflow pipes as a byproduct of the manufacturing, agricultural and service-sector production processes.

Fundamentally all of these environmental agendas go hand-in-hand. To point out an obvious example, the importance of air quality can’t be avoided when talking about health or about tourism, since we depend on both of them for survival.

Efforts to safeguard the environment, regardless of focus or philosophy, coalesces under the banner of confronting anthropogenic climate change, stopping it, preparing ourselves for its impacts, and adapting ourselves to its consequences.

In that vein, we introduce a budding movement in defense of air quality in this issue of Melóncoyote, and we welcome the public’s new consciousness in reducing the sources of smog, whether they are from electric generating plants, cars or unchecked urbanization.

We congratulate those who work on solutions, like fossil fuel-free transportation, the production of energy from renewable sources, and low impact technology projects that leave a smaller carbon footprint while simultaneously improving the quality of life. We highlight some examples, such as the installation of solar panels and solar ovens.

At the same time, we inform about resistance, both to the onslaught by the foreign mining industry and by the Mexican president himself, whose policies do not take into account the importance of water for the people, but insists instead on damning the nation’s water, piping it, and privatizing it for profit.

The population, beaten down as it is by the recent reforms in fiscal, energy, and other government policies, will surely keep watch in the new year in order to strengthen those democratic avenues that will permit the healthy coexistence with nature which is so fundamental to the economic and cultural survival of the nation's communities.

Meloncoyote will be here, for the sixth consecutive year, in order to document and share this. We greatly appreciate your readership and your opinions.